


Teach A Girl To Fish And She'll Dream Forever

by tielan



Category: Anne of Green Gables - L. M. Montgomery
Genre: Fishing, Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-07
Updated: 2019-02-07
Packaged: 2019-10-23 16:20:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,110
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17686868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tielan/pseuds/tielan
Summary: Rilla Blythe is the youngest of the Blythe kids, the baby of the family. At least, that’s how Kenneth’s used to thinking of her. Small and chubby and pestering Walter or Jem to let her come along, too...It’s a little girl who’s paused, startled and embarrassed at being caught in her play, not a baby.





	Teach A Girl To Fish And She'll Dream Forever

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lmizutani](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lmizutani/gifts).



 

Kenneth loves the House of Dreams across the Harbour – soft and quiet and pensive – but there’s something delightfully welcoming about Ingleside.

Perhaps it’s the open porch looking out onto the front lawn, several wicker seats placed there as though to say, _come on up and take a break with us_. Perhaps its the way the lilac and white cones of the hyacinths nod and sway a gracious greeting in the breeze up from Rainbow Valley. Perhaps it’s the knowing bursts of pansies in the pathway beds, like joyful shouts of a homewards triumphal march.

Perhaps it’s just the knowledge that, across the lawn, inside the house, in the woods beyond, there are friends.

Kenneth doesn’t go through the front door, but instead, walks around to the kitchen entrance, where Susan is sure to have the door open and perhaps will  give  him a treat?

There is, indeed, the scent of baked goods emanating from the kitchen, but when Kenneth pokes his head in, it’s all still in the oven, and Susan is chopping vegetables for the pot.

“Hello, Susan.”

“Kenneth Ford,” her brow twitches as she glances out the window, squinting as though she’s measuring the length of the shadows. “Is your family here already? I didn’t hear the car...”

“Mother and Persis are shopping in Charlottetown this morning, and Dad will drive them over when they get back. I wanted to come early to Ingleside...”

“Ah,” Susan scoops a board full of chopped potatoes into a bowl. “Well, I’m afraid you’re out of luck today. Little Jem and Walter are up at the Shore seeing the fishing boats come in, and Dr Blythe took the twins to see old Mrs. Warton, who wanted to see ‘his girls’, only Rilla didn’t want to go. She may be around somewhere, but I think Shirley’s gone over to the Manse to see Carl Meredith.”

Kenneth grinned. He’d heard about Carl Meredith, although he’d never met the kid. “And not bring back anything in his pockets?”

“Shirley knows better.” Susan says severely. “But you can still go down to Rainbow Valley if you like.”

“May I have a cookie?”

Susan eyes him. “I suppose you can. In the brown jar up on the mantlepiece.”

He takes an oatmeal cookie – definitely one of the perks of arriving early at Ingleside – and skips off down the path to Rainbow Valley. Even if it’s just him, he can maybe do a spot of fishing, or climb a tree, or dream of being a samurai with a sword, defending his sworn lord...

Like the little girl mock-fighting a spruce sapling with a large branch stripped of leaves and twigs that’s nearly as big as her, her reddish-brown hair bouncing along with her as she darts back and forth, poking madly with the stick.

Rilla Blythe is the youngest of the Blythe kids, the baby of the family.

At least, that’s how Kenneth’s used to thinking of her. Small and chubby and pestering Walter or Jem to let her come along, too...

It’s a little girl who’s paused, startled and embarrassed at being caught in her play, not a baby.

“Oh!”

“Hi,” he says.

“Hi.” She blinks at him. “What are you doing here?”

A little surprised to be challenged, Kenneth tells her his name and adds, “My family’s coming to dinner.”

“But it’th not dinner time yet.” She lisps the ‘s’ sound and Kenneth finds himself grinning. 

“I came down to see Jem and Walter.”

“Oh.” Her little face falls. “They’ve gone to see the fithing thips, you know.”

“Yes, Susan said. I thought I’d come down to Rainbow Valley and do some fishing in the stream.”

“Oh!” She brightens immediately and leaps to her feet. “I know where the line is kept!”

Kenneth also knows where Jem and Walter keep the fishing line and equipment, but Rainbow Valley is Blythe land, and Rilla – however young – is one of his hosts here.

So he follows her to the log behind which the fishing gear is kept, and just nods when she shows him where the line and tackle are stored. But when she tries to pull out the box, he puts out a hand. “I’ll get it. I’m the one fishing, after all.”

Once he has the box in hand, he starts to pick his way down to the little stream that flows through the bottom end of Rainbow Valley, and finds himself accompanied by Rilla.

“Can I fish with you?”

“Weren’t you playing with swords?”

“I’d rather fish. But I have to fish with someone else, because I might fall in.”

“You can’t swim yet?”

“I can a little.” She pouts. “I’m nearly nine!

Kenneth considers saying ‘no’, because he wants to fish; he doesn’t want to be looking out for a little girl who might fall in and need saving. “If I tell you to stay close to the shore are you going to stay close to the shore?”

“Yes.”

He decides to let her stay. After all, it’s not like there’s any other company to be had, and as the youngest, she probably gets left out of a lot of things by the older Blythe kids. And Kenneth’s kind of curious; he knows all the others, has spent a bit of time with the Blythes during his summer across the Harbour, but never with Rilla.

At the stream, he rolls up the hems of his trousers – he didn’t really come prepared to fish – and starts digging for bait by the riverbank.

Rilla pulls off her stockings and shoes and promptly wades into the rocky shallows, unbothered by the prospect of getting her hems damp. In this, she’s unlike Kenneth’s West cousins who whine when anything gets too messy for their clothes. She wades back after a moment or two at the edge. “I think there’s fish. I saw something in the water.”

“Maybe it was a shark!” Kenneth teases.

“Silly,” she says contemptuously. “There wouldn’t be sharks in a stream.”

“He might be lost.”

The disgusted look she gives him as she climbs back on the grass could come from his sister Persis. Kenneth grins as he hooks the bait on the scuffed hook at the end of the fishing twine and holds out the pole to Rilla.

“Ready to go!”

She takes the pole and thanks him, then wades back out into the stream. Kenneth keeps a wary eye on her as she goes all the way out to the edge of the shallows, but she doesn’t step out into the current, just tosses her line out into the deep before stepping back a little.

He gets his bait onto his hook, and goes out to stand next to her – maybe a little deeper, because he’s nearly fourteen himself and can swim like a fish thanks to summers in the harbour.

And then it’s just a waiting game between them and the fish.

Rilla’s young and not exactly the quiet type, so Kenneth’s not surprised when she pipes up after a few minutes.

“What’s it like living in a big city?”

She has a lisp, so it comes out more like, “ _Whathth it like living in a big thity?_ ” But Kenneth understands her well enough. 

At first, he’s tempted to point out that Toronto isn’t really a big city; but compared to anything on PEI, it’s huge.

“Busier. Noisier. Dirtier.” Nothing like the soft stillness of Rainbow Valley, or even the quiet murmur of Glen St Mary. “And people don’t pay so much attention to each other.”

“Are there cars, yet? Jerry Meredith said that he wants a car when he’s grown up, but Mrs Marshall Elliot says they’re dirty and noisy and just a fad and this, too, will pass.”

Kenneth grins. That sounds very much like both Jerry Meredith – who’s a great guy, just a bit wild – and Mrs. Marshall Elliot who’s been a friend to his mother since his mother was his age. To hear Rilla lisp the name is both amusing and kind of adorable, too. But he answers the question, because she’s obviously genuinely curious.

“One or two of them. You don’t see them but rarely.”

“Have _you_ seen one?” 

“Yeah, there was one outside city hall the other week.” Kenneth’s dad admired it with him while they were on their way to the bank. “Dad said he might get one. But not before...”

He trails off.

“Not before?”

“Well, not before we go to Japan.”

Her eyes are huge hazel moons in the chubby little face as her mouth drops open. “To  _Japan_ ? But that’s so far away!”

That was Kenneth’s response when his father first brought the idea up at the dinner table. In fact, that was everyone’s response. A year in Japan? On the other side of the world? Where people look so different and have different customs? Speak an entirely different language that doesn’t even have proper lettering?

Persis was also distraught that she’d miss a year with her friends, which weighed with Kenneth a little, but not as much. He ’s older than Persis, and a lot of his friends are about to go into business with their fathers, or going to college to study. So he’d lose contact with a lot of them anyway, and...Japan at least sounded interesting.

“Halfway across the world,” he tells her. “All the way across the Pacific Ocean. That’s the ocean on the other side of Canada, out west.”

Rilla gives him a disgusted look. “I know that. And the people there are oriental and they speak Japanese. And their writing is like birds nests.”

“ _Kanji_ ,” Kenneth corrects her. “It’s called _kanji_.”

“Will you learn _kanji_ while you’re in Japan?” Rilla asks. “That’s a whole year away!”

“Well, a year goes pretty fast.”

“Oh, no, a year takes _forever_.” 

Kenneth reflects that, yeah, a year felt like forever when he was eight. But he’s not above teasing the kid. “Well, I guess I’ll be in Japan  _forever_ , then,” he says, matching her tone.

Rilla recognises she’s being teased, and pouts at him. The little dip in her top lip gets deeper when she pouts and it’s terribly cute, and Kenneth is just laughing at her when she gasps and grabs onto her fishing pole. “Oh! I got something!”

He starts to reach for it, but she pulls it away. “I can do it!”

So he watches as her line leaps and she pulls it back then lets it bend and twist again, before pulling it back again. She’s enjoying this, wet to her knees with her reddish brown curls damp from the river spray, but she’s still small and growing tired.

“Nearly there,” Kenneth urges her on. “One big yank!”

And with one big yank indeed, she lands the fish in the shallows – a grey-speckled rainbow trout.

She squeals – delighted, not horrified, because none of the Ingleside girls are particularly squeamish – and does this little stomp of joy in the shallows, before she tries to haul it up to the riverbank.

Kenneth pulls in his own line and helps her pick up the fish – it really is a pretty decent size, and more than enough for their dinner...

“My own fish!” Rilla is gloating as she hoists it up, still flapping. “Thank you for helping me bring it in!”

“You’re welcome,” Kenneth says automatically. “But...I don’t think we should have brought it in. We’re having dinner up at the house.”

“We can eat this up at the house,” Rilla protests. “Susan will cook it.”

Kenneth isn’t so sure about that. The cook at home usually has a menu all planned out for dinners, and he can’t imagine Susan being any less organised. Still, any thought of adjusting Rilla’s expectations is lost as her face falls.

Instead, he shows her how to clean and gut the fish, sliding the knife away from them, and rinsing the fish guts off in the river.

“They’ll flow downstream and some other fish will get an unexpected dinner,” he explains to Rilla.

“They eat each other?” She sounds more interested than horrified. 

“Yes, they do.” Kenneth hooks a finger in the mouth of the trout. “Ready to go, Rilla my-Rilla?”

The nickname is one that the other Ingleside kids use – a play on her name, which came from Marilla Cuthbert who brought up Mrs Blythe. Kenneth thinks it’s kind of cute – it matches the kid herself.

She obviously doesn’t think so from the scowl on her face. “Don’t call me that!” Then, as though remembering herself, she adds, “Please.”

Kenneth grins. She’s a Blythe all right. “All right, I won’t.”

Together, they start up the trail back to Ingleside.

 


End file.
